Yahoo dissident jailed in China

A Chinese dissident is doing forced labour alongside hardened criminals in a high-security jail while serving a 10-year sentence for emailing political information out of China, a rights group has said.
 
Shi Tao, who was jailed for "illegally divulging state secrets abroad" on evidence provided by Yahoo! Inc, is being forced to work  without pay in a jewellery factory attached to Chishan prison in central Hunan province, Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said.
 
According to his family, many inmates have pneumonia or other respiratory ailments because of the products used in cutting and polishing the jewels and the dust created, the group said.
 
Prison authorities sell the jewellery, it added.
 
The prison, located on an island in the middle of Lake Dongting,  near the town of Yuanjiang, is a high-security centre reserved for convicts serving sentences of 10 years or more, it said.
 
The prison could not be immediately contacted for comment.
 
According to Reporters Without Borders, most of the inmates in the Chishan prison are organised crime members, political prisoners  and followers of the Falungong spiritual movement.
 
Shi, 37, was convicted in April for using his email account to circulate a government order barring Chinese media from marking the 15th anniversary of the brutal June 1989 crackdown on democracy activists in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
 
Chinese Internet police traced the email to Shi’s Hong Kong Yahoo account after the Internet company handed over email account information.
 
Yahoo has defended itself, saying it was only complying with local laws, which is an integral part of its doing business in China.
 
Shi claimed that the order was widely circulated in China and did not constitute a "state secret".

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